Alice M W Hunt

The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis draws together topics and methodologies essential for the socio-cultural, mineralogical, and geochemical analysis of archaelogical ceramic. Ceramic is one of the most complex and ubiquitous archaeomaterials in the archaeological record: it occurs around the world and through time in almost every culture and context, from building materials and technological installations to utilitarian wares and votive figurines. For more than 100 years, archaeologists have used ceramic analysis to answer complex questions about economy, subsistence, technological innovation, social organization, and dating.

The volume is structured around the themes 'Research design and data analysis', 'Foundational concepts', 'Evaluating ceramic provenance', 'Investigating ceramic manufacture', 'Assessing vessel function', and 'Dating ceramic assemblages'. It provides a common vocabulary and offers practical tools and guidelines for ceramic analysis using techniques and methodologies ranging from network analysis and typology to rehydroxylation dating and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Each chapter provides the theoretical background and practical guidelines, such as cost and destructiveness of analysis, for each technique, as well as detailed case studies illustrating the application and interpretation of analytical data for answering anthropological questions.

n Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape, Alice Hunt investigates the social and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware by its cultural audience in the Neo-Assyrian central and annexed provinces, and the unincorporated territories, including buffer zones and vassal states. Traditionally, Palace Ware has been equated with imperial identity. By understanding these vessels as a vehicle through which interregional and intercultural relationships were negotiated and maintained she reveals their complexity gaining a more nuanced view of imperial dynamics.

Palace Ware Across the Neo-Assyrian Imperial Landscape is the first work of its kind; providing in-depth analysis of the formal and fabric characteristic, production technology, and raw material provenance of Palace Ware, and locating these data within the larger narratives of power, presentation, symbol and meaning that shaped the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape.

Recently, there has been significant interest in the use of portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometers (pXRF) for cultural materials applications, especially ceramics and sediments. Although modern pXRF spectrometers have lower detection limits and better resolution than those of decades past, portable instruments remain subject to the same limitations as bench-top ED-XRF instruments, particularly with respect to sample preparation, instrument calibration, and ability to accurately quantify low-Z elements. In this paper, we evaluate the strengths and limitations of pXRF analysis for the quantitative compositional analysis of archaeological ceramics and sediments and propose an analytical protocol and calibration designed to optimize pXRF performance for these materials.

Cathodoluminescence (CL) spectrometry reveals genetic crystallographic and chemical characteristics of quartz grains specific to the thermodynamic conditions in which they crystallised and their mineralisation history. These genetic characteristics have been used successfully to determine the provenance of sediments. Geological sediments are the raw material for archaeological ceramics which means quartz CL has a potential application in ceramic provenance studies, particularly for fine wares and fabrics in which quartz is the only identifiable inclusion.

This paper demonstrates the viability of quartz CL for ceramic studies (i) by determining that the effect of thermal radiation (heat) does not alter the genetic defect structure of quartz (up to 1100°C) and (ii) using genetic quartz types to differentiate geological groups in an experimental ceramic assemblage which could not be identified using traditional methods (INAA and ceramic petrography).

The great strength of the archaeological sciences is their foundation in the physical, social and earth sciences. Each of these intellectual backgrounds has its own paradigm for structuring thought, formulating questions, and approaching research. Each also has its own specialised technical vocabulary. Dialogue among the parent fields enriches the archaeological sciences as a discipline, and stimulates innovative and often elegant solutions to anthropological problems. However, the multidisciplinary nature of the archaeological sciences inevitably leads to an incomplete understanding or misunderstanding of the technical, theoretical, and methodological limitations of the parent fields. Imperfect understanding of these limitations can lead to the misinterpretation and miscommunication of scientific data. Perpetuated by the absence of a unifying vocabulary, miscommunication is compounded in second and third generation archaeological scientists from humanities backgrounds who are unaware of the theoretical and methodological subtext of the parent disciplines.

It is our responsibility as archaeological scientists, regardless of background, to communicate effectively and accurately. This paper explores the use of the term ‘provenance’ in archaeology, geology and the archaeological sciences, and attempts to move toward a common understanding of the theoretical concepts and scientific reality behind it.

Neo-Assyrian Palace Ware is an 8th-7th century B.C.E. fine-ware which originated in Northern Mesopotamia and spread throughout the greater Levant. The mechanism by which Palace Ware moved across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape (trade or local imitation/emulation) is of great archaeological interest. This dataset provides chemical compositional data, generated using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), for Palace Ware vessels from Nimrud and Nineveh, in the Assyrian imperial core (Iraq), Dūr-Katlimmu, in one of the annexed provinces (Syria), and Tell Jemmeh, located outside the Neo-Assyrian provincial system (Israel).

Palace ware, an 8th–7th century BC drabware, is used as an indicator of Neo-Assyrian imperial elite contact and occupation, despite the lack of an established definition. Definitional criteria must incorporate formal characteristics, such as shape, and manufacture behaviours, such as raw material processing, in order to facilitate the distinction between imported or Assyrian produced vessels and imitations from the imperial provinces. This paper presents eleven preliminary definitional criteria for palace ware based on petrographic analysis and scanning electron microscopy of 24 sherds, radiography of 9 vessels, and typological analysis of 75 vessels from the Neo-Assyrian imperial heartland: Aššur, Nineveh, and Nimrud.

The spread of ‘Palace Ware’, an 8th–7th century BCE drabware, across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape coincides with the annexation of territory and establishment of vassal states and buffer zones throughout the ancient Near East. Consequently, Palace Ware has been considered ‘imperial’ material culture and equated with imperial identity. This unilateral, top-down interpretation reduces material expression of complex interregional, intercultural interaction into either imposition or emulation. In this paper, we take a more nuanced approach to the transmission of Palace Ware. Imperial interactions are context specific, recursive relationships negotiated through material culture and symbols of identity and power. If Palace Ware served as a medium through which Neo-Assyrian imperial relationships were established, justified and maintained, it is important to understand (a) how it was transported across the empire; and (b) who consumed Palace Ware both inside and outside the Neo-Assyrian heartland. In the process of answering these questions, using morphometric, petrographic and geochemical data, we are able to evaluate subtle changes in the social function and semiotic meaning of Palace Ware across the Neo-Assyrian imperial landscape and better understand the nature of these relationships.

Palace Ware is often used as an index artefact for Neo-Assyrian imperial occupation and administration (e.g. Parker 2001) and referred to in the literature as a prestige good, luxury item and an elite ware (e.g. Hausleiter 2008; Ohtsu 1991).  In this paper we evaluate the social value and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware vessels from Nimrud, Kalhû and Aššur for the consumer of these vessels and in the greater community in the Assyrian imperial heartland before turning our attention to the modification, adaptation and assimilation of these values and meanings for Palace Ware consumers and communities in the Annexed Provinces (Guzana and Dūr-Katlimmu) and territories outside the administrative system, such as Tell Jemmeh in the Negev.  Our analysis of social value and semiotic meaning involves the archaeological and archaeometric analysis of the formal and fabric characteristics of Palace Ware, their raw material provenance, and manufacture technology or chaîne opératoire.  Our results indicate that in the Assyrian Heartland, Palace Ware vessels have specific political and social functions and were probably not considered elite or prestigious by the consumer, although their social and symbolic function may have given them elite status in the general population.  Outside the Assyrian Heartland, the social value and meaning of Palace Ware are heightened and exaggerated becoming a patriotic statement and perhaps flirting with prestige status for the consumer.  Outside the Neo-Assyrian imperial system, the ‘Assyrian’ social function and symbolic meaning of Palace Ware is abandoned and the vessels are considered prestige goods by both the consumer and community since they reflect the metropolitan status of the consumer.  Based on these analyses, we conclude that Palace Ware is not an indicator of Neo-Assyrian imperial contact: its occurrence throughout the empire and beyond is more complex than material culture colonisation.  We also believe caution should be used when referring to these vessels as prestige and luxury items since their value and status change depending upon location in the empire and perspective of the observer.

Recently archaeological materials analysis has focused on the development and application of new techniques, such as handheld x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysers, for the geochemical provenance of artefacts (e.g. Goren et al. 2010). While these studies are important for the continued growth of the discipline and stimulate valuable discussion about quantitative, semi-quantitative, quasi-quantitative and qualitative data sets (e.g. Shackley 2010), they ignore the underlying uncertainties inherent in the data itself. Measuring the elemental composition of ceramic artefacts with the highest degree of accuracy and precision, to the lowest detection limits possible, using either quantitative or semi-quantitative instruments is only valuable for establishing artefact provenance if that chemical profile actually provides information about provenance.

The premise of ceramic provenance using geochemical analyses is that raw material signatures are chemically distinct and that those chemical signatures can be detected in ceramic fabrics. Sediments are generally not directly suitable for potting and must first be processed and refined, changing their mineralogical and chemical signature (Rice 1987: 118–119). What is measured then, in chemical provenance studies, is the chemical profile of a ceramic fabric, which may or may not be related chemically to the raw sediment from which it is composed (e.g. Hein et al. 2004). The degree to which ceramic fabrics reflect their raw materials provenance is a level of uncertainty which is often overlooked when communicating results of these studies.

An additional level of uncertainty exists related to the chemical homogeneity of the ceramic raw materials themselves. Geochemical variability in the natural world is limited: a finite number of elements bond in predictable ways to crystallise a finite number of minerals, and those minerals combine to form a predicable and finite number of rock types. Like crystallisation, weathering of rocks follows an established trajectory so that the chemical and mineralogical heterogeneity of detrital sediments is limited further still. Sediments from different geographic locations or provenance can have the same chemical signature (e.g. Klein and Langmuir 1989). This geochemical homogeneity is another level of uncertainty which is often ignored in ceramic provenance studies.

These layers of uncertainty and failure to effectively communicate them in geochemical provenance studies impact the larger archaeological narrative through the misidentification of ceramic provenance upon which social, economic and political theories and relative chronologies are based.

This paper evaluates uncertainty in chemical provenance studies of archeological ceramics related to human behaviour and natural geological homogeneity and proposes new vocabulary for communicating this uncertainty within the wider archaeological community.

Quartz is ubiquitous on the earth’s crust and chemically homogenous, therefore quartz is not typically used for the geochemical and petrographic provenance of archaeological ceramics. However, quartz minerals contain subtle diversity in their structure and chemical impurities related to formation processes and history which enable the provenance of detrital sediments. These structural and chemical defects of quartz are detected using cathodoluminescnence (CL) spectroscopy and have the potential to facilitate provenance of highly levigated and/or quartz rich ceramic fabrics and may even be used to determine the origin of quartz tempers.

CL uses lattice structure defects alongside chemical impurities to ‘fingerprint’ quartz origin. Although quartz is chemically stable, its lattice is vulnerable to low temperature metamorphism at 573oC, the α-β quartz transition. For quartz CL to be used for provenance of archaeological ceramics, it is necessary to determine experimentally whether this metamorphism interferes with the diagnostic CL fingerprint of quartz.

This paper explains the theory of quartz CL provenance, evaluates the successful results of the ‘firing’ experiment, and explores the use of CL quartz provenance using an archaeological case study of highly levigated ceramics.

Artefacts are composed both physically and semiotically. Layers of functional, symbolic and social meaning are interwoven into the material construction of an artefact, to communicate and reinforce ideologies and establish and maintain relationships. It is difficult to recover the semiotic significance of an artefact through archaeology because it is not always possible to know which aspects of an artefact were emically significant. Furthermore, as meaning is socially driven, the semantics of an object change with social context. This means that an object acquired from another culture may carry a different meaning in its new context. Both production and use add meaning to an artefact: after technologically requisite behaviours are excluded socially meaningful choices remain.

Assyrian "palace ware", a thin-walled fine ware, is believed to imitate metal vessels used in the Neo-Assyrian court. Previous studies of this ware have tended to focus on issues of provenance and date. This paper will address the semiotics of Assyrian 'palace ware' through a comprehensive analysis of its production and use throughout the Neo-Assyrian empire. The techniques required to manufacture 'palace ware' forms are not exclusive; most skilled potters in the Levant would have been technically able to reproduce them. However comparison of 'palace ware' chaîne opératoire in the central polity and more peripheral regions, as well as study of how these vessels were being used, suggests several significant difference which might indicate differing social or cultural contexts. Finally, the agency by which social meaning and ideology are transmitted or transformed will be discussed.

The importance of the Neo-Assyrian empire (934-610 B.C.E.) for Levantine archaeology necessitates a thorough understanding of imperial material culture: its definition and function in the central polity and transmission, adoption/rejection and hybridisation in annexed territories. Assyrian palace ware, a distinctive fine ware, has been associated with the Neo-Assyrian elite since it was first described in a brief note by Rawson (1953). Rawson’s general observations were never intended to be definitional and were limited to basic descriptions of vessel form and colour, from which technological information is supposed. These observations were refined by Oates (1954, 1959), who divided ‘palace ware’ into two subgroups based on wall thickness, but never expanded upon or formulated a cohesive set of criteria for palace ware. Recent studies have looked at the provenance of palace ware in the Negev (Engstrom 2004) and dated its appearance in southern Palestine (Na’aman and Thareani-Sussely 2006). The aim of this paper is to refine and establish the technological  criteria for Assyrian palace ware in order to facilitate archaeological discussions about the imperial dynamics of the Neo-Assyrian empire in general and the semiotics of palace ware specifically.

Palace ware from the Neo-Assyrian central polity will be examined macroscopically, petrographically and using electron beam and radiation methods to establish a chaîne opératoire. X-ray radiography will be used to evaluate vessel formation, firing and finishing techniques. Scanning electron microscopy with an energy dispersive detector (SEM-EDS) and electron microprobe (EPMA) analyses will be employed to examine raw clay processing techniques and refine provenance assignments of these ceramics because palace ware is extremely difficult to provenance due to the rarity of mineral inclusions (<0.5%) (Hunt 2007).

These analyses were carefully selected to provide measurable and quantifiable technological signatures of the manufacturing process. The technological signatures of central polity made palace ware are crucial to understanding the semiotics of palace ware in annexed territories; whether the manufacture location and/or manufacture technique impacted the social identity of the vessels. This contribution is part of ongoing research by the author into the dynamics of Neo-Assyrian imperialism in the southern Levant.

During his excavation of Tell Jemmeh in 1927, Sir Flinders Petrie ascribed a corpus of eggshell ware pottery to the Assyrian occupation of the site. This assertion was ‘confirmed’ by Dr. Gus van Beek during his excavation of the tell in the 1970s, by the presence of Assyrian architecture which he believed served as the “governor’s palace” and the tell itself as the “provincial capital” during the Neo-Assyrian period. This workshop will re-evaluate the Assyrian presence at Jemmeh through critical, comparative analysis of architectural features and artefact corpora from provincial capitals throughout the empire, and an archaeometric analysis of Assyrian pottery forms to determine production technology and provenance.

Recently, there has been significant interest in the use of portable x-ray fluorescence devices (pXRF) for cultural materials applications, particularly the non–destructive provenance determination of archaeological materials.  Historic copper alloys, typically brasses and bronzes, can often be sourced using elemental analysis to reveal regionally and temporally specific impurities and trace element signatures.  We investigate the analytical performance of five different pXRF spectrometers for the non–destructive quantitative analysis of historic copper alloys both as prepared samples and field specimens.

Recently, there has been significant interest in the use of portable x-ray fluorescence devices (pXRF) for cultural materials applications, especially ceramics and sediments.  Although modern instruments have lower detection limits and better resolution than those of decades past, portable instruments are subject to the same limitations of all ED-XRF instruments, particularly with respect to sample preparation, instrument calibration, and ability to accurately quantify low-Z elements.  We have developed an analytical protocol for the accurate and precise pXRF analysis of archaeological ceramics and both as prepared samples and field specimens.